Columnist Jeff German: Questioning the means used to reach the decision to leave Las Vegas off the list of cities deserving anti-terrorism funding

Sunday, Jan. 22, 2006 | 7:48 a.m.

Jeff German's column appears Sunday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday in the Sun. Reach him at german@lasvegassun.com or (702) 259-4067.

Who figured that the Homeland Security Department would be gambling with our safety?

Rather than rely upon the nation's top intelligence and security minds, Homeland Security czar Michael Chertoff is using mathematicians to assess the odds of another terrorist attack.

Chertoff said last week that it took his anti-terrorism nerds in Washington "3.2 billion calculations" to determine that Las Vegas isn't one of the country's high-risk metropolitan areas.

While Carl Sagan was rolling over in his grave, that's how Chertoff defended a nonsensical decision to leave Las Vegas off the list of the 35 American cities that deserve to share in the latest round of federal anti-terrorism funding.

If I were Chertoff, I wouldn't be be placing any bets on those odds on the Strip -- because that's a losing proposition.

The sports books won't have any trouble predicting that Las Vegas -- the symbol of Western decadence to Muslim extremists -- is higher on al-Qaida's list of potential targets.

Neither will any tourist on the street with the least bit of common sense.

Sheriff Bill Young, our No. 1 first-responder, also isn't very impressed with the Homeland Security Department's mathematical abilities.

Young is from the old school of law enforcement. He doesn't need number crunchers to help him deal with the threat of terrorism.

The sheriff relies on what his gut tells him -- and what the country's leading terrorist hunters on the front lines are saying.

"I've talked to the top people in the FBI and the CIA, and they're not saying what Secretary Chertoff is saying," Young explains.

Young discloses that his own officers assigned to the Homeland Security Department's operations center in Washington have been told that Las Vegas is one of the top five cities of risk in the country.

We are right up there with New York and Washington, which makes me wonder what kind of calculators Chertoff's brainiacs are using.

"It's like the right hand doesn't know what the left hand is doing back there," Young says.

The more Chertoff tries to defend what Young calls an "indefensible position" on Las Vegas, the angrier the sheriff gets.

The Homeland Security calculations, Young says, completely ignore the realities of what makes Las Vegas the country's No. 1 tourism destination.

That's about as scary as it gets when you consider that since Sept. 11, al-Qaida has been hitting tourist sites in other countries.

"In the fanatical Muslim world, we embody everything they hate about America," Young says. "We have drinking, gambling, scantily clad women. This is what we market and push out there in the world. How do you put that into a mathematical formula?"

The worst part of it is that the Homeland Security dweebs won't explain to Young and other top Nevada officials, such as Public Safety Director George Togliatti, why Las Vegas has been snubbed in the latest round of federal funding.

"What upsets me more than anything else is that they won't give us a reason," says Togliatti, a retired FBI supervisor. "They won't tell us this magic formula."

It's almost as if a shell game is being played with our security.

"There's a degree of arrogance back there," Togliatti says. "That is simply unacceptable."

The odds are it may be negligent, too.